Sometimes ideas that sound pretty good don’t work out. What is it they say about “the best laid plans of mice and men?”
Well, I had me a man-sized idea about planting this — shhh! — secret and very personal food plot, but it turned out to be a real squeaker.
Once again, Mother Natured fooled me.
I could complain that I was sold up the river, but to be fair that really wasn’t the case. I tend to watch the hunting television shows in the late summer into deer hunting season, and I saw an advertisement for a food plot seed that you could just throw out on the ground and, voila!, you have a ready-made lush, green food plot that the deer would just tear up.
I had just the perfect spot for an isolated woodland micro wildlife food plot that I hoped nobody else at deer camp would find. I told nobody about my plan.
It was located at the terminal end of a camp trail that was blocked years ago by a huge fallen tree. Every hunter in camp knew this was a dead-end trail, so I did not expect anybody to be venturing down the trail to discover my secret food plot.
Best laid plan
Sounds good doesn’t it? Yeah, well …
I bought two bags of the seed product and read all the instructions and followed them to a “T.”
They started with finding a small place to plant, then using common hand garden tools like a heavy tine rake to scrape all the ground cover off while scratching up the surface of the soil. Then I tossed out the seed, using an official handheld seed spreader.
I added Triple-13 fertilizer just to make the plot official.
I used another leaf rake to lightly toss the raked up soil to cover the seed. I took photos so I could track the progress of the plot. This was early September.
Next, I popped up a Millennium 10-foot lightweight tripod hunting stand set back into the woods to hide it. The plot was about 50 yards away and the typical prevailing winds would have crossed over in front of me, not blowing back across the mini-plot.
I even found a way to come in from the other end of the trail, parking my ATV behind the fallen tree, completely hidden. The whole set up was near perfect.
Or, so I thought.
Fooled again
In late October, I slipped in the back way to check on the plot. It was up and as bright a tasty green as any deer could imagine. I must have smiled like a Cheshire cat.
Man, this was going to be the deal.
I crept in again before sunrise on opening weekend and got settled into the mini-tripod and waited for what would be a disappointing sunrise.
This is what I saw: My food plot was dead, suffocated by the leaves that fell from the canopy of trees during early November frosts.
“What the fruitcake?” is what I thought. I never once considered the overhead trees to be an issue and I paid the price.
Another lesson learned.
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